?Around February [2019] I was thinking I didn?t want to be the savior of the Knicks or New York,?? Durant said on JJ Redick?s ?Old Man and the Three? podcast. ?That never really moved me. I didn?t care about being on Broadway. I just want to play ball and go to the crib and chill.?
?So I felt like that?s what Brooklyn embodied,?? Durant said. ?And I wanted to live in New York. And I felt like Brooklyn is everything I?m about ? chill, on the low, all-black everything, we?re quiet. Just focus on basketball. There?s no show when you come to our games. No Madison Square, no mecca. All of that s?t. We?re just going to hoop and build something new in Brooklyn.?
?I never planned on going to the Knicks,?? Durant said. ?That was just the media putting that out there, especially when I didn?t sign a three-year deal [as a free agent in 2018],? Durant said. ?Once I signed a [one-year deal], just the noise got louder about me going to the Knicks for some reason. Knicks being the savior, you know how that goes. Every time a big free agent is up the Knicks are going to get him. So it just took off.?